Episode 61 - Alice Faye Duncan

Photo Credit: Erica Dunlap

When you talk to Alice Faye Duncan, you can't help but smile. Her passion for writing for children and her zest for life comes through in every word.

In addition to being an author, Alice Faye is also a high school librarian and National Board certified educator.

In January, she had two children's books published, Evicted: The Struggle for the Right to Vote, and Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free, The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth.

Evicted is a middle grade book about sharecroppers in Fayette County, Tennessee who were thrown out of their homes by the white farmers they worked for in 1959 because they dared to register to vote. For about two years, many of them ended up living in a Tent City on land donated by one of the few Black property owners at the time.

Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free is a picture book about the woman who was behind the campaign for Juneteenth to be made a federal holiday. Juneteenth commemorates, June 19, 1865, which is the date when word reached enslaved people in Texas that they had been freed. That was two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all of the slaves in Confederate states.

Alice Faye has written 10 books and has several more forthcoming. Many of her books deal with the history of the Black experience in the U.S.

Interview Highlights:

Alice Faye reveals...

- How her childhood experiences influenced her to become a writer

- How a chance encounter with a civil rights icon gave her the idea for Evicted

- Why she wants parents, teachers, and librarians to become activists

Click here to listen to the episode. You can help Alice Faye and the show by purchasing Evicted: The Struggle for the Right to Vote, and Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free, The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth.

The first listener to reach out to us on either Facebook or Twitter to tell us which poet visited Alice's classroom as a child and had a big impact on her will win free copies of both books.

If you have won a ReadMore giveaway in the last 90 days, you're ineligible. If we ever walked to CHS together, you're probably ineligible. ReadMore does not have a friends and family plan. But we'll always have those C-Town memories.